1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a kit of surgical tools for performing a minimally invasive anterior cervical disectomy and the method for the tools' use.
2. Background of the Prior Art
The human spine is formed from 33 vertebrae divided into five different regions, the cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal, in descending order. Of the five regions, the vertebrae of the upper three remain separated through the life of a person while the lower two fuse in an adult to form two bones, the sacral vertebrae forming the sacrum and the coccygeal vertebrae forming the coccyx. The human spine, which is a weight bearing column, may be afflicted with a variety of ailments such as a disc herniation which may compress the spinal cord or the nerve roots leading to pain, loss of function, and in severe cases, complete paralysis of the legs with an attendant loss of bowel and bladder control. Surgical intervention to remove the offending discal tissue is the prescribed course of treatment. Traditionally, such procedures were not only difficult, but oftentimes dangerous. Traditional surgical techniques called for a large incision to be made, the appropriate disectomy to be performed, and the patient to be closed. Such a surgical procedure is extremely invasive causing substantial trauma to the intervening tissue and leading to an extended post operative recovery period which is typically accompanied by substantial discomfort and pain. Additionally, substantial scarring of the patient occurs and in the case of a cervical disectomy, such scarring is not easily disguised by the patient. As often the amount of post operative discomfort and the size of the scar are the only objective criteria used by the patient to judge the quality of the surgeon's work, it is advantageous to reduce the size of the incision made and the scar left behind.
Toward that end and in order to address the other drawbacks of traditional surgical procedures for curing disc herniation, minimally invasive procedures have been developed wherein the spine is approached by making one or more small incisions into the patient and placing a sheath into the body via each incision and passing various instruments through the sheaths in order to gain mechanical access to the desired area. Such access may include placement of video cameras into the body cavity in order to allow the surgeon to have visual access to the affected area as well as placing deburrment and removal tools into the body cavity in order to extricate the offending disc material. The sheaths protect the surrounding blood vessels and organs during traversal of the body by the various instruments.
The use of minimally invasive surgical procedures has greatly reduced the complexity and inherent danger associated with spinal surgery. Additionally, many procedures are performed under local anesthesia wherein the patient maintains consciousness resulting in a dramatic decrease in post operative discomfort of the patient and compression of the post operative recovery period. Furthermore, the scarring of the patient is dramatically reduced with the surgical procedure leaving only one or more small wounds which tend to bypass scrutiny by the casual observer even for a cervical procedure. Accordingly, minimally invasive surgical techniques for dissecting offending material from the spine have achieved wide acceptance and advances in various minimally invasive techniques are constantly being made.
Of the various disectomy procedures that are performed, perhaps the trickiest is that of the cervical disectomy. Unlike the back of a person, the neck is relatively narrow and vital arteries and organs, including the carotid, the jugular, the trachea, and the esophagus, are bunched much more tightly. This places an even greater burden on the surgeon to exercise the utmost care in performing the surgery so as to not cause trauma to these organs and arteries.
Providing the surgeon with the appropriate tools to perform the cervical disectomy, enables the surgeon to achieve a high level of surgical success while minimizing the risk to the patient. Such tools must be effective for all aspects of the procedure including placement of the initial incision and insertion of the protective sheath into the neck, deburrment of the offending tissue, and extraction of the offending tissue. The tools must be simple in design yet elegant in operation without the need for undue indwelling of the tools within the patient.